


Song of the Blood

by Sarielle



Category: Radical Face - Fandom, The Branches - Radical Face (Album)
Genre: Basically Abigail's daughters after the events of both Southern Snow and Midnight, Dreams, Gen, Premonitions, Present Tense, Sibling Love, Sisters, Southern Snow, The Family Tree: The Bastards, The Family Tree: The Leaves, There are currently three works in this fandom i must quench my own thirst, What is up with Annabel in Midnight? Idk, my interpretation of Sisters, supernatural powers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-30
Updated: 2016-03-30
Packaged: 2018-05-30 01:50:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6403756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sarielle/pseuds/Sarielle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The story of 'Sisters' told through Abigail's daughters Katelyn and Anabel.<br/>(References the track Midnight on the new album 'The Leaves' so maybe minor spoilers? Check out the notes for context)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Song of the Blood

**Author's Note:**

> First of all I'm so surprised there's fic in this fandom and that I'm not alone in adoring these characters. A lot of my own interpretation went into this as well as what info we have based on the map on the website.
> 
> Midnight: Told by an external narrator about Anabel's trek into the woods when she disappeared. My interpretation that Anabel, like Kaitlyn (in this story) inherited powers like those of her grandmother's bloodline. However Anabel's powers were distressing enough for Annabel to seek out a witch or medicine woman about a cure. The song is kind of open and very up to interpretation and since the album is very new we don't know much from Ben about it, I added onto it and made it my own (if kinda depressing) ending after seeking out the medicine woman a Anabel is cured of her powers (that's her own blood on the gown), but in the poor conditions she gets lost and dies of exposure. 
> 
> Sisters: Kaitlyn the narrator reflects upon how close she was with her sister as a child. The train is from a childhood memory of moving by train as a family. Kaitlyn like her uncle Stone and cousin Virgil can see and communicate with the dead but like her mother, Abigail, her powers can only be activated when she sleeps.  
> Kaitlyn moved away as a teenager to live with her 'normal' uncle Abel and his family.
> 
> Southern Snow: Gabriel appears here as a child in Kaitlyn's premonition/dream, which she notes as odd seeing as he is a grown man, in fact his son was born months before Annabel.
> 
> Other songs referenced: The Crooked Kind, Kin, Secrets, Severus and Stone.

She is on a train with her family. Their Mama is reading her scripture aloud to an audience of shadows that dance and flicker as the fading sunlight eases through the carriage windows. Gabe sits beside her his head leaning on her shoulder. His posture is soft, relaxed even, she can't make out his face but he seems to be listening. Gabe is much younger than he's supposed to to be. Isn’t he a father now? But here on the train his frame is almost skeletal, his hair falls downy and long upon his collar. The orange sun brings out veins of gold in his dark curls. 

She sits behind them staring out the window at the pastures and the corn fields that fly by in streaks of green and gold.  Her sister is holding her hand. Fingers so soft, and yet so cold.

“Kate.” She says, Katelyn looks up from the window. Annabel squeezes her hand, her lips flutter like a pulse.  There is blood on her white nightdress.  Why is Annabel wearing naught but her nightdress, in the middle of November? The thought wavers as soon as it comes in and sublimes off into the aether.

“Aren’t you cold?” she asks her sister, but the question fades in the air as soon as she has asked it. Annabel is staring right at her; her eyes are not the green-tinged hazel she remembers but black voids reflecting back Katelyn’s own startled expression.

“Kate, Oh Sweet Katie.” Annabel whispers, with a great deal of sorrow in her tone. “Dear Katie, Beloved Katie. I wish you could know. I wish I could show you why.”

“Know what? Why what?” Her sister's black eyes are crying, and there is blood on her nightdress. 

 _Jesus, is that_ her _blood?_ Had Katelyn not noticed it before? Why is there blood is on her nightdress?

Their Mama is reading from the Book of Revelation now with a voice like cobwebs.

“I am coming soon. Hold on to what you have, so that no one will take your crown. The one who is victorious I will make a pillar in the temple of my God. Never again will they leave it. I will write on them the name of my God and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem…”

The setting sun has been masked by dark strokes of cloud: boards across a window pane. The way the light changes casts monochrome shadows on their Mama and Gabriel. The only one in full colour is her sister with her mess of chestnut hair, thin pink lips and the crisp, crisp crimson of the blood on her nightdress.

“Annabel?” Her voice is young and cracking at the edges. “Sweetheart, tell me what’s wrong. What’s going on?”

Her sister doesn’t wipe the tears that track down her cheeks. There is such a desperation in her face that Katelyn’s gut starts to churn.

Her veins are singing, and the blood pumping in her ears is more of an old gospel choir now.

 _God no_. She thinks, when it dawns on her just what that means.  Nineteen years of silence, nineteen years of thinking she was safe. That the old family tales, were just that, stories made to be passed on to the children but always taken with a grain of salt and now... for it to appear like this. This isn’t a tall tale. This isn’t just some fever dream of her cousin’s. Katelyn can hear them singing loudly now and her gut turns to lead.

_Not me. Not Annabel. Please, Dear Lord, hasn’t this family seen enough suffering?_

 Her sister is watching her, expression sombre. “I love you so much, Kate. Always know that, I love you more than anything.” Annabel is squeezing her hand as hard as her ice cold hands can manage and Katelyn can feel her own eyes start to prick.

The worst thing is how familiar the song is to her. It’s a lullaby their Mama used to sing to them, and the bells around her ankle. It’s a nocturne, Gramma Victoria used to play on the old dust-covered piano in their childhood home and its crackle of the hearth there. It’s the uncle she never got to meet. The tune is old and it is innate. It echoes in Katelyn’s ventricles and reverberates through her rib cage.

There are words too, they come like whispers on the wind, mixed in with her mother’s voice and the sounds of the train.

_Something in the middle, Something in the middle, Something in the middle, Something's in the way._

She looks at Annabel: her baby sister, her childhood friend. She sees her with her bloody gown and her black, black eyes and she understands.

“Don’t go. Please, don’t go.” She says, though she knows it hopeless. “I’m sorry I left you behind. I am! I’m _so_ sorry.”

Her sister smiles. Katelyn knows right then she is forgiven. The song in her blood is almost ending. She feels, more than hears, the eerie voices crescendo with urgency. They’ve drowned out the wind and her mother’s voice now.

She brings her sister’s hand up to her lips and kisses each of her cold fingers separately. She reaches over and wipes the tears off even colder cheeks.

“I love you, too. Annabel and I always will.” Her voice has a ferocity to it, though she thinks it might just be well disguised panic.

Her sister smiles one last time before the train carriage, along with everyone in it, falls away into darkness.

* * *

 

Katelyn wakes with wet cheeks in the rocking chair in the living room. She must have fallen asleep after reading to the children, she thinks, because the fireplace has burnt down to a soft glow. Her aunt Eleanor is leaning over her lifting little Benji off her lap.

“Sorry, darl.” She murmurs, hoisting the child on to her hip, as he flops like a ragdoll. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“It’s okay.” Says Katelyn, “It’s late, I should go to bed myself.”

Eleanor smiles, there are fine lines that run out in branches from the corners of her eyes.

“Before you do, check in with your uncle out on the porch. He says there’s a letter, from your brother.”

She expects to feel something: grief, perhaps? Sorrow, a sense of loss?

All she feels is a cool breeze from under the doorway and the pumping of blood in her veins.

“I’ll go to him shortly.” She says. Her throat grows dry and dusty. “G’night Aunt Eleanor.”

The older woman nods, holding the boy to her chest. “Sleep well, Katie.”

Katelyn bites back her laugh, and she hears the sleep-hushed remnants of the voices start to laugh along with her.

She waits until her aunt is gone before pulling herself to stand.

She will go outside to the front porch in a minute, but she doesn’t need to speak with Uncle Abel to know the contents of Gabriel’s letter.

Because, behind the wind and the crackle of the fireplace, she can hear Annabel laughing too.


End file.
